Texts & Tools

Texts & Tools

You will find here a collection of contributions of different authors sharing their ideas, views or lessons learnt during their professional development. Please feel encouraged to comment on the contributions and share your experiences on the various topics. If you would like to add your own contribution, please get in contact with us.

The Observatory of Research and Scientific Careers-F.R.S-FNRS located in Belgium published its first thematic report on the employment status of 2,065 PhD holders who received their doctorate between 2012 and 2018 from the six French-speaking universities of Belgium. PhD holders have a high rate of employment and a low rate of unemployment. However, regardless of their research field, an important proportion of PhD holders stay in the university sector and that a non-negligible proportion work under temporary contracts.

University Development and Innovation – Africa (UDI-A) is a project funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union. The project gathers a consortium consisting of four African universities, from Angola and Mozambique, four European Institutions and EFMD.

Patricia Rosado Pinto of NOVA Lisbon tells about the founding and the beginnings of their Doctoral School. She gives insights into the main ideas of the establishment and the main goals to train PhD students in various fields.

In 2014 the University of Basel started the interdisciplinary initiative "diss.Kurs". Participants are given the opportunity to gain insights into the latest research projects of PhD students as well as general information about doctoral services at the university for people thinking of starting their PhD.

In 2012, a pilot project was launched at Hasselt University, Belgium, entitled ‘How to valorise my PhD? First aid in planning your career path’. It was a two-stage project, aimed at PhD students and postdocs from across all disciplines, aiming at supporting young researchers in developing their professional career.

Since 2013 Dahlem Research School has expanded its Career Development offerings in general in the frame of its Professional Development Program directed at doctoral candidates. In this context, the DRS has launched new initiatives to support careers of prospective graduates beyond academia. The following text describes the two general initiatives DRS Pro Business and DRS Pro Gründung, renamed DRS Pro Transfer in 2016 .

Everybody working at a doctoral school knows several cases of conflict between doctoral students and their supervisors. Ways need to be found to deal with each case seperately but also to find an overall procedure to foster the needs of both sides. Humboldt Graduate School developed an interesting format of professional counselling and mediation, which proved to be highly effienct and may act as a role model for other Higher Education Institutions.

Gerald Lind describes the struggles at the University of Graz during the process of establishing the support unit to improve doctoral education "DocServices". Especially the met dissapproval by supervisors due to various reasons was striking. The DocServices team found a successful way of creating a basis of acknowledgement for a new supervisory culture within their institution.

We believe in knowledge-sharing as a competitive advantage and try to achieve this with interactive webinars organised by professionals, for professionals. Our second webinar aimed at professionals who want to set up, improve or reflect on their training offers in transferable skills.

Watch the webinar with Verity Eston and Christian Dumpidak an Transferable Skills Training recorded in November 2018!

About the Association

The PRIDE-network Association aims at representing the community of Professionals in Doctoral Education within Europe and beyond.